FLOW
by Yasushi Kusume
The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.
Flow, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
In his book Flow, Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi described the experiences of individuals who could effortlessly concentrate on a task, and the state of mind that enabled them to do so. He named this state of mind 'Flow'. When people are in Flow, he argued, they lose a sense of time; they are enjoying themselves and aren't concerned with how long a task is taking. He said that such feelings are available to all people, regardless of their background, culture, age and gender. And he cited two components vital to achieving enjoyment.
1. The task should have a clear and visible chance of completion.
2. The task should present clear goals and provide immediate feedbacks.
Csíkszentmihályi use the phrase ‘optimal experience’ and explained that the best moment – FLOW – is often contrary to what we usually believe are the best moments in our lives. The optimal experience, he believed, came less from passive acceptance – relaxing in the sun, for example - but from working on something enjoyable. From ‘actively’ enjoying a task.
Unconscious operation
Professor John Duncan, a behavioural neuroscientist at Cambridge University, has pointed out that some familiar tasks (for example, driving for an experienced driver) are easier to carry out simultaneously with other tasks because our brains are good at parallel processing. However, that's usually the case only if the tasks are sufficiently different.
He wrote, 'The brain has very specialised modules for different tasks, like language processing and spatial recognition. It stands to reason that two similar tasks are much harder to do simultaneously because they're using similar bits of tissue.'
While I accept and understand Professor Duncan's comment, multi-tasking is, as I've already pointed out, part of our daily lives. We may well be sacrificing quality in what we do, but we frequently proceed to do one or more things at the same time anyway.
So when we design the experience of our product/service, do we take into account the fact that when our customers use it, they may well be multi-tasking? Do we understand that activities requiring special attention - and so disrupting the unconscious multi-tasking flow – may be a challenge to new users? Does our usability testing operate in a realistic, multi-tasking – context?
Understanding experience
Over the last decade, design capabilities have made considerable progress in the orchestration of various touchpoints. We can now provide a far greater ‘total’ brand experience. (Several organisations are even going so far as to rename their design teams ‘UX design’ – User Experience Design). However, I wonder if we have also increased our understanding of how people experience such touchpoints. As our products and services offer increasingly more (complex) options, are we also taking into account the equally complex mechanisms governing how people perceive their experience?
Are we making the most of Flow?